Mandela – Hero for the World

Brandon Sun “Small
World” Column, Monday, July 8 / 13Zack
Gross

It doesn’t seem to have been
that long ago when I, as a university student in Winnipeg, along with
friends such as current fellow Sun columnist David McConkey,
demonstrated in front of Manitoba liquor stores in the early 1970s to
protest the sale of South African Paarl brand wines. We also
did similarly at local Safeway stores in those days which sold South
African Outspan brand oranges.

What led to our protest was the South African regime’s Apartheid
policy, which translates as “separation,” but actually meant poverty and
oppression for black people in that country. The white
supremacist government relegated black people to ghettos in the cities
and shanty towns in the country, saying that the two races shouldn’t
mix. They set up a system of passbooks to regulate the
movement of blacks who basically lived in a 20th-century slave system.

Any protest from blacks meant jailings, beatings, murders – including
the most infamous incident, the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, where 69
blacks were killed, many shot in the back as they fled and many of them
women and children, and 180 were injured. For us,
demonstrating in the safety and freedom of Canada, we were eventually
pleased to see our government support a global boycott and help to
force out the Apartheid Regime in the early 1990s.

Nelson Mandela, who at this writing lies near death at almost 95 years
of age, was born in South Africa, became active in the anti-Apartheid
movement in his twenties, and was an active opponent of the regime as a
leader of the African National Congress (ANC).
Coincidentally, Mandela’s real African first name commonly translates
as “troublemaker” and certainly he was seen that way by white
supremacists. “Nelson” was a Christian or “anglo” name given
to him by his pastor.

Mandela lived his early life in poverty as his parents had lost their
land in a dispute with the local colonial magistrate. His
father then died when he was only nine. However, he was
adopted by a local chief and ultimately was the first in his birth
family to be able to attend school. At his coming of age
ceremony at sixteen, the chief spoke of the frustration and sadness
that black South Africans felt as white men controlled their land and
black people had little to do but perform mindless chores for the
minority rulers.

As the adopted son of a local chief, Mandela was able to attend college
and study toward becoming a clerk, about as high as a black person
could rise in those days. When college students protested the
poor food and lack of say they had at school, Mandela as a student
representative sided with them and was expelled for the year.
He eventually settled in Johannesburg, took courses by correspondence
and began to study law.

As a member of the ANC, Mandela joined a youth faction that believed
they must go beyond polite petitioning toward civil
disobedience. He was involved in numerous campaigns of
defiance of racist laws but these were all non-violent. He
also founded a law firm with his friend Oliver Tambo (another future
South African President) and the two defended unrepresented blacks in
court at low cost. In 1956, Mandela was arrested for treason
but was acquitted. Meanwhile, young blacks were moving toward
more militant action and he ultimately followed them.

Mandela served two prison terms for organizing national strikes and for
sabotage, in 1963 being sentenced to prison for twenty-seven
years. He became a symbol of the black struggle, surviving
tuberculosis and a plot to murder him. After several failed
attempts in the 1980s to get Mandela to renounce the black struggle,
the South African regime finally released him in 1990 and unbanned the
ANC. Then, after years of negotiation and tension, South
Africa held its first democratic elections in 1994.

Mandela and South African President de Klerk received the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1993 and the following year Mandela became President and de
Klerk his first deputy. The next five years were spent trying
to bring the two races together as much as possible to build the
nation, to establish a strong central government and to enshrine
minority human rights. Of course, many whites left the
country throughout the course of these “troubles,” but South Africa is
now an economic and political leader in Africa and in the developing
world, despite continued challenges with poverty and violence.

After retiring from politics in 1999, Mandela spent many years raising
funds for development projects, writing several books, and convened
numerous conferences and campaigns on peace, women’s equality and
democracy. His birthday (and my oldest son’s), July 18th, was
declared in 2009 to be Mandela Day, an international day to celebrate
and act upon his legacy. Recently, in response to Mr.
Mandela’s failing health, US President Barack Obama declared him “a
hero for the world”.

Nelson Mandela rose from poverty, fought for his people, and ultimately
worked for reconciliation and prosperity for all. We wish him
peace.Zack Gross works
for the Manitoba Council for International
Co-operation (MCIC), a
coalition of more than 40 international development organizations.